Two
by cellotlix
Summary: On Virmire, three became two. Now that Saren is dead, the survivors must learn to accept their loss. Team Milky Way, Shenko, Wilenko, smut.


_Two soldiers slam against the wall and kiss. Their lips are lances, jousting over a pine-splinted fence. They war for control as only soldiers do: the man catches the woman's jaw between his powerful fingers and holds her fast, and the woman fists her grasping hands in his hair, twisting until he gasps, until the roots give. But he is not dissuaded, and neither is she; they strip with military efficiency, chasing hands over bare skin, nails dragging, scraping, tearing._

_The woman's lips find their way toward the man's ear, until they are only separate by a mere whisper. "When you kiss me," she breathes, "do you think about her?"_

_The man makes a sound - half a sob, half a moan – when he plunges into her. _

* * *

The man arrives first. He orders a beer without really looking at the bartender, and when he speaks he does so with a voice like cracked glass, only heartbeats away from shattering. He's some kind of big Alliance hero, but looking at him now you could barely see the military angles of his posture. His uniform is in poor repair. Shadows loom beneath his eyes, pitted and dark.

He does not look up from his half-empty beer, not even when the woman arrives.

She's military, like him. She's making a better show of it, but ultimately it is clear she suffers from the same kind of soul rot as the man. How exhausted she seems as she crosses the room, her gait slow and measured, as if she bears weights on her shoulders. Her fists ball and a tremor runs through them, chases to her eye, flickering there like a candle.

"Kaidan," says the woman, taking a seat beside him.

He grunts in response.

The woman orders a beer, and there they sit in silence, swallowing their sorrow with the bitter beer.

"They don't get the good stuff on the Citadel," the woman says, offhand. She spins her bottle in circles on the counter, the edges leaving behind little trails of condensation, coils within coils. They dry oddly, leaving stinky prints in the chipped wood.

"Nope," says the man.

"Not like Vancouver."

"You got it," he says.

"They tell you what they're going to do with you yet?"

The man shrugs, and it seems to take a great effort for him to raise his shoulders only slightly. If anything, his eyes are more remote. "Probably something on Earth."

"So that's it?" the woman says sharply. "She dies and you throw in the towel?"

The man doesn't respond, but his fingers tighten slightly on the bottle. For one moment, no longer than the blink of an eye, a burst of wispy light streaks over them, like a flash of lightning. But then it is dark and quiet again, and his hands relax. "I'll go where I'm ordered," he says dully. "I follow orders."

"That's good, isn't it? Good little soldier," she snaps, bitter as old blood. "That's a comfort, especially now, with things like they are."

"You're not supposed to talk about it," he says, but there is no real reprimand in his voice. "No one is supposed to know."

"Fuck that," says the woman, her fist coming down. "What do they care? _Did_ they care? What does it matter now?"

"It matters," the man insists without heat.

"It doesn't, not to them," the woman fires back. "She didn't."

"Don't," the man whispers. His hands tremble.

She snarls. "Why shouldn't I talk about her? Why shouldn't I tell this whole fucking bar exactly what happened and why?"

The man shakes his head, and for the first time since he entered the bar there is feeling in his bright eyes. There is pain, like a stone on his chest, dragging him down. "Just don't," he says. "Please."

It is the plea that shatters her anger, and almost instantly she deflates. Her shoulders sag, and the furious fire leaves her eyes, the tight angle of her lips. They tremble too, before she bites them fiercely. At her slightest gesture the bartender brings her another beer, and she downs it in one swallow.

"Fine," she says finally, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "So let's talk of nice things."

The man turns away. "I can't think of anything nice."

She regards him; his unshaven cheeks, tangled hair curling behind his ears instead of slicked back in its customary style, eyes like two dead pits. He looks smaller – diminished, somehow, like he contracted some kind of wasting disease since she saw him last. And she thinks how tragic he is, how sad; where she suffers loudly, he pulls it all in and bears his grief in silence. There inside him, she is certain whatever he felt must have festered into something ugly, yet he never says a word.

In that moment, she hates him.

"They're making a memorial for her," she says, cruelly, because anything is better than this state of walking death he's entered, this endless sorrowing fugue. "Isn't that nice?"

"Sure," he says, downing his beer and signaling for another.

"I bet they'll make a dozen more. Maybe one on the Citadel. On on HQ for sure, and you'll be able to look at it every day. While you follow orders and let it all happen."

Still he doesn't fight back. "Sounds about right."

"Maybe it'll still be there when the Reapers blow us all up. Wouldn't that be funny? Wouldn't that be _nice?_"

Now he reacts. He faces her for the first time since she entered the bar with something sharp in his eyes, something like desire, or something darker. "Stop," he says, and there is no denying the power in his voice – a command like compulsion.

"Stop what?"

"I know what you're doing," he says. "Just stop."

"Why?" she demands.

"Because I'm not going back. I'll be transferred, and I'll follow orders. And nothing you say is going to change that. Understand?"

She nods tightly. She only has to glance in the bartender's direction and there is another beer in her hands, this one fresh and cold, as if chilled in a glacier. She downs it and the bartender turns away to hide his smile. He makes roaring trade on veterans and the lost. And two lost souls are certainly better than one.

"I'm sorry," she says as the alcohol loosens her tongue and makes her warm. It spreads through her veins, pooling in her belly, between her thighs. And as she descends into the haze, she watches him. She no longer sees the man as she knew him – greater than the sum of his parts – but as a disjointed collection of pleasing features; those strong hands she knows so well (better on the barrel of a gun or coiled over biotics), that muscled chest, sleeping beneath his rumpled uniform. He would never look at her normally, when they were three instead of two, but loss makes her brazen. Loss makes her hungry.

"Don't be," he says, halfway into a shrug before he loses interest.

"Let's really talk about nice things," she says, a little desperate now that she doesn't want his hate or sympathy.

"Like?"

"Like your family," she says. "Mom know you're coming back?"

He nods. "She can't wait. She was in floods."

"I can imagine." She pinches the loose skin at her wrist. "Maybe it'll be better to be home."

"It won't be anything," he says dully, retreating.

"Right, right. Sorry. You'll salute and follow orders. That's that."

She's surprised to see a bitter grin on his lips. "You can't resist, can you?"

"No, I can't," she says. "This is hard for me too, you know."

"I know that –"

"I don't think you do," she says. "You've as good as painted yourself with her ashes and thrown yourself on her pyre. You think I can't see the way you look at me, snubbing your nose because I don't grieve like you?"

"I'm not," he said. "And if I am, I don't mean to."

"It doesn't matter what you mean. You're doing it anyway."

He takes a breath, then another. He sways on the barstool and watches her shifting shape, as one of her becomes two, and then three. In this light, she almost looks like someone else. "I'm sorry."

"You're sorry," she says softly. "I'm sorry. We're all sorry. What do you say we put the regrets away and try to forget this ever happened?"

He's quiet, but this quiet is different. It's the thoughtful kind that accompanies an interesting problem, and not the hollow quiet of grief. "Why not," he says. They lean together and clink bottles before downing them in one pull.

They make an effort. They talk of lighter things, happy and useless things. They talk of the new Blasto film that came out not long ago (though the man saw it after, and he can barely remember what happened in it). They talk of impermanence, of things that won't last what's coming. Not like the idol bearing the shape and features of the one they lost – still standing, surrounded by piles of rubble. The thought horrifies the woman, but in some odd way it comforts the man. He needs to believe she will outlast them all. The last of them, keeping silent vigil.

"You'd feel better if you shot something," the woman says, slurring a little. "I could hook you up."

"I won't," the man replies. "I tried."

"What'd you shoot?"

"I shot Saren," he says, eyes glassy. "Don't you remember?"

"I don't think that was you," she says, flashing him a lopsided grin. "I think that was me."

"Bullshit."

"It was." She makes a gun out of her hands and aims at the mirror behind the bar, miming the shot. "Splattered his brains. Felt good."

"I did that," the man insists. "You made sure he was dead."

"Maybe you're right," the woman says, capitulating with a shrug. "Does it make a difference?"

The man is quiet, balancing precariously on his stool, swaying like a broken branch in the wind. "No," he says finally. "It doesn't."

How sad he is now, how small. When she first saw him he was everything a military man aims to be; trim, powerful. _Strong. _ He was exacting as a blade, moving only by careful measurements; his entire upward path was by design. To see him in battle was to appreciate how machinelike a man could be and still be a man. She had watched him so closely then and smiled, because she trusted his strength, and she knew the days of it would never end. He was steady as stone. He was solid ground.

"Let's go," she says, stumbling as she slides off her stool.

"Go where?" he asks.

"Let's go shoot something."

"They won't let us in the range drunk."

"I'm not drunk." She tries another smile. "And we won't go to the range."

Sober, the man would have subtly declined and taken her home. He'd make sure she was safe, that she wasn't in danger of choking on her own vomit. Maybe he'd stay the night just to make doubly sure. But drunk, he follows her, silently as a shadow.

The odd thought of him as her shadow makes her laugh, makes her hungry. She reaches for him and drags him level, slings his arm around her shoulder, pulls him closer. For a moment she thinks he'll flinch away, but to her surprise he allows it. She thinks for a moment that his hands tighten on her arm, as if he is wanting too, as if he can't bear to be alone with his dreams of Virmire, that bright spot of red plumed flame in the swallowing dark.

She drags him to her room in a dingy little motel on the only ward not to be affected by Sovereign. If they were just another pair of grunts they'd be bunked up with the rest of the Alliance, in overstuffed quarters the Council has set aside for them. But they're big heroes, saviors of the galaxy. Defenders of all that's good – of what little is good. They get to do what they please.

"They charging you much?" the man says as he stumbles into her room, but his hands linger on her waist, fingers dragging, savoring. She isn't imagining it.

"Nope," she returns. She guides him to a couch because he's dragging his feet across the filthy floors, inching along, and without her help he'd meander in circles until he collapsed on the ground in a pitiful heap. They sink down together and almost instantly he curls into her, his heavy head tilting sideways until it rests on her narrow shoulder. His dirty hair tickles her nose.

"You're warm," he murmurs.

"So are you."

He shakes his head, and his curls brush her cheek. "I haven't been warm since Virmire."

She lifts a hand to his brow, and beneath her fingers he burns. But she remembers the hell of Dante's imagining – the central ring that burns with absolute cold – and she imagines this husk of a man imprisoned there, shivering, shameful tears frozen to his cheeks like pearls. And the thought of it brings a thick lump to her throat.

They sit together in silence for a long while. Slowly his fingers trail over her bare arm, and though she so desperately wants to believe he is savoring her, instead she knows that he is thinking of the one they lost, the gaping hole slung between them; their mutual shame. He looks at her and sees a different set of features, ones that he loved without reservation, ones he worshiped so chastely that he lives to regret his temperance, for now he'll never know her.

And the thought of the woman between them is like poison. She said she'd swallow it for the sake of a little comfort, but she can't. She never was good at pretending. "You're thinking of her," she says, her voice a hoarse whisper.

"No." He shakes his head, but she's already rounded on him so that he pitches forward, unbalanced.

"You are," she says. "You always are."

"No," he says again. It's all he can think to say. "Why are you saying this?"

She doesn't answer. Instead, she turns her grief and rage outward, focuses it at him, so for a brief moment she can escape the pain of it. "It was always the two of you," she whispers. "Heads together, laughing. Like family already. And me on the outside."

"What are you talking about?" he demands. The sharpness of the accusation has sobered him, if only slightly. Though he sways in place and tries to right himself, his eyes are focused on hers. They are unblinking.

"It was supposed to be the three of us," she says. "You ruined it. You loved her."

"So did you."

"It wasn't the same."

He's quiet. Then: "Why does this matter now?"

"Because," she whispers. "You can't look at me without seeing her. Without remembering."

And now that she's said it, he does. He allows himself to. Slowly the numb man before her fades and grieving man resurfaces, the man who is less a husk and more a furious storm, with the lid rattling above. She clearly sees the anger that sustains him, the blame keeping him alive. When he looks at her now it's with the full measure of it, and she shivers.

"Why didn't you go back for her?" he says quietly, and it's this quiet that makes her afraid. "Why did you save me?"

Because she'd had a choice: save the man she loved like her family, or her – the lost one between them. Because she had to make a choice, there on that terrible day in the Virmire jungles, choking on air thick with the reek of burnt corpses, amid the bodies of krogan. Because when forced to consider what the loss of either of them would mean, she chose what she knew she'd be able to survive.

"Because I couldn't leave you behind," she whispers. "What the fuck was I supposed to do, leave you behind?"

"Yes," he says, gripping her wrist so tightly she thinks it'll shatter in his hands. What exquisite pain that would be. "Damn it."

"What am I supposed to do about it now?" she asks him. "Huh? What am I supposed to do about it now that she's dead and you can barely look at me? Now that you have to get drunk off your ass before you can talk to me?"

He lurches to his feet and stumbles, but he's steady when she shoots up after him. They're squaring off now, as if preparing for a fight. His fists curl and hers tighten, and she thinks about how good it would feel to sink her bludgeon fist into his face, so hard that he'd fly across the room and crash into the bed. She thinks about beating the grief out of him, because every time she looks at his dead face she sees him slung in that freezing place, the deepest circle of hell, reserved for traitors and fools. She wants him alive instead; burning between her thighs, hands that leave bruises.

"You can get out," he says. And oh - how his eyes burn when he looks at her now! How she's come to love the anger, to need it like she needs him, because it's better than the alternative.

"This is my fucking room!" she shouts at him. "You get out."

"Fine."

He turns to leave, but this time she's the one who grabs him tightly, the knobby bone of his wrist digging into the heart of her palm. Her fingers tighten, his flex. He looks at her as if he can't quite capture the shape of her, as if for a moment he saw someone else in her place.

"Now what are you going to do?" she taunts softly, tenderly. How she hates him, now; how she loves him.

He stands in the middle of the room like a sundered tree, hanging by slim branches. She knows he doubts the ground will even be there to meet him if he takes a single step. Yet she draws closer now, moving as if through a fog. Because she's angry and she's hungry, because it's dark at night and the dreams come back when she's alone. Because of all the men and woman in the galaxy, he is the only one who understands what this is like, and she needs that understanding now.

"Don't," he breathes, jerking aside when she drops his wrist and reaches out to touch him.

"Why not?" she whispers. "Afraid you'll call out the wrong name?"

"I'm afraid I'll hurt you," he admits softly.

She draws closer, so that they stand nose to nose, chest to chest. Her breasts flatten against him, and he closes his eyes. "So hurt me," she says.

And she knows before another word is spoken that she's won, and the ache in her will be sated, if only for a night. She knows it because she can see it playing on the beloved, hated features of his face – the serious brows that knit together, contemplating surrender, the full lips that tremble like leaves. His hands are gentle at first, but when she brings her lips to his neck they grip tightly, and she knows the next morning her skin will be dark with bruises, where he held her too closely.

And she won't blame him, because she needed it.

She captures his lip between her teeth and doesn't let go until she tastes blood, sharp and metallic on her tongue. He makes a sound deep in his throat – not of pain, but of need. He fists his hands in her hair and yanks her head back, hard enough to hurt, and there he presses his face to the hollow at her neck, to the most tender flesh there, and glides his tongue over bone, nipping until she cries out too.

It is slow, at first. He is reconsidering even now – constantly afraid of losing control. Lieutenant hospital corners, she liked to call him, before three became two. But the alcohol helps her win the battle, and before long he is gasping for it, panting. She can feel the thickness of his erection press between her thighs, and god - she wants it like she's never wanted anything. She needs him to throw her down and pin her hands above her head. She needs him to use her, to use what she dreamed of as punishment.

"Let me have it," she goads him, her hands hard and demanding as they slide up his chest.

"Shut up," he rasps. He doesn't want her to talk. He wants her to be quiet and unobtrusive, so that he can fuck her like he'd fuck the woman they lost. So he can keep her breasts, maybe, but take the rest and replace it.

"No," she taunts. She pulls at his belt and shoves his pants to his ankles, and before he can retort she's taken him in her hands, sliding up the length of him, toying with the ridge at the head until he writhes. Faster and faster, hands flying, and the feel of him so rigid there, so desperately wanting that she can feel his pulse thrumming in his cock, and only when he gasps does she relent.

"God damn it," he whispers brokenly when she kisses him again, and she can almost taste the words. "God damn it."

He slams her against the wall and kisses her bloody. Their lips are lances, jousting over a pine-splinted fence. They war for control as only soldiers do: he catches her jaw between his powerful fingers and holds her fast, and she fists her grasping hands in his hair, twisting until he gasps, until the roots give. But he is not dissuaded, and neither is she; they strip with military efficiency, chasing hands over bare skin, nails dragging, scraping, tearing.

Her lips find their way toward his ear, until they are only separate by a mere whisper. "When you kiss me," she breathes, "do you think about her?"

He makes a sound - half a sob, half a moan – when he plunges into her.

And this is what she needs – this pain. He's too rough and too fast, and each thrust jostles her against the wall, but she can only think that he's not fucking her hard enough, that this doesn't hurt like she needs it to. When he pins her wrists over her head with one hand and squeezes her breast too roughly with the other, she cries out so loudly that she knows she'll wake the whole block. But she doesn't care, she doesn't care – she wants it when he growls in her neck, when he grunts with each thrust. She will burn and bruise later, but now it is fast and rough, and she needs it.

She slips and he slides out, and the absence of him is enough to make her cry out in frustration, her palm slamming hard against the wall – how badly she aches, now that she is empty of him.

But he doesn't make a sound; she wonders if he even heard her. Instead, he pushes her down to the bed and crawls over her. He hovers there for a moment, poised like a trapeze artist, his cock slick and swollen in the dark. She reaches for him but he does not come to her. Instead, he watches.

"Don't," she says, because now he's not angry. Now he's looking at her and his fingers trace the curve of her breast so tenderly that it hurts, and this is the kind of hurt she can't bear. "Don't do that."

"Shh."

"I mean it, Kaidan. Don't –"

He captures her breast in his mouth, his tongue flicking, stroking – and she arches into him, hands splayed in the mused covers, taut as the string on a violin. How well he plays her now when his fingers slide up into her, stroking there, easing so gently, as if she were made of glass. She wants him to hate her and fuck her, but this is worse – this she can't – she –

"Oh god," she whimpers as she comes.

And when he enters her again, it's not furious and rough. This is grief, and she should have known it would be this way for him, so fixated even now, hung up on a dead woman. He is mourning as he fucks her – when he kisses her sweetly, it is as if he is kissing the dead. When he quickens, holding her tightly, tears crowding at the corner of his eyes, she knows that he sees the lost woman between them, long dead in some radioactive crater. He is imagining the dead woman he loved – her skin, her lips, what it would feel like to fuck her. He is making do. And perhaps so is she.

Now he comes – his hands tangled in her hair, mouth at her neck, and it is there that she feels his lips move. A whisper brushes her neck. "Shepard," he says, like a sigh. "Shepard, Shepard."

And it is the first time he's said her name since the end.

They lie in the dark for hours until he sags, his tight, shamed posture disengaging muscle by muscle before slipping into unconsciousness. But she does not sleep. She watches the slow rise and fall of his chest, the trail of dark hair curling against smooth skin, the thick tangle of it between his thighs. There is no wrinkle between his brows when he sleeps. Maybe tonight he won't dream. She can hope.

Hours pass, and when her head stops spinning, she pushes herself upright and dresses slowly. She is still vague from the beer, punch drunk from the sex, from the unexpected pain of it. From the shame, from how stupid she's been.

She thinks of the first time they became three – just the three of them, three dumb soldiers, completely unaware that they were in over their heads. They leaned on the railing and looked out at the nebula, humbled by the sheer staggering size of it, and by their own staggering inconsequentiality. She thinks about going there now, leaning over that railing, watching the shuttles buzzing around like flies, lights blinking in the darkness. She thinks about how three became two, and how two became one.

She's about to leave when Kaidan wakes. He peers up at her through the dull dark of the hotel room, and for the first time since she's known him, she feels nothing. Not anger, not hate, not love; just a void. What relief it is.

"See you, Chief," he says.

And she breathes. "See you, LT."

**AN: This story came about during conversation with freakingmuse, as most of my little one shots do these days. It is probably the only true AU I've ever written - what if Shepard died on Virmire instead of Ashley? What if you didn't know who died while reading? You probably figured out the twist at the beginning, but it was fun to write Ashley vague enough that you could make the mistake, if you looked at it a certain way, in a certain light. Thank you so much for reading, and feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you thought. **


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